re: john valder is troppo John Valder is no doubt a fully paid...

re: john valder is troppo John Valder is no doubt a fully paid up member of the Tweed Richmond Organic Philanthropic Prats Organisation (TROPPO), they have a groovy newspaper man;



EMAIL The Northern Rivers Echo á Circulation: 23,000 weekly
Phone 612 6622 2888 á Fax 612 6622 1791
PO Box 37 Lismore NSW 2480 Australia

Book Reviews

with Robin Osborne

Not Happy, John!

By Margo Kingston
Penguin $24.95

Axis of Deceit

By Andrew Wilkie
Black Inc.
$29.95

Political analyst Margo Kingston voted for John Howard in 1996 (largely because of her anger at Paul Keating) while long-serving Lt-Col. Andrew Wilkie worked for the Office of National Assessments (ONA) that reports intelligence directly to the Prime Minister.

Both have now penned books about the perceived decline in Australia's democratic health, depicting Howard as the principal cause and Iraq as the major, but not only, symptom.

Kingston, the Herald's 'web diarist' and author of Off the Rails, about the Pauline Hanson campaign, turned full circle after the George W. Bush visit in 2003.

She saw a 'Parliament on its collective knees before a condescending Imperial Caesar led by a lame provincial governor of a Prime Minister so blind to the duties of his own democratic office... that he turned what might have been a healing thank-you visit into just another vehicle for his own ambitions.'

She deplores how the public and local media were kept away from Parliament House, how Howard handpicked guests for the barbecue and how the widow of the first Australian SAS soldier killed in Afghanistan was not invited to see Bush lay a wreath in his specific memory.

Her lengthy book includes website contributions, an examination of the Zionist lobby's influence (being Jewish, Kingston is on safer ground than many) and a full-frontal on the Tony Abbott-led 'Australians for Honest Politicians' that led to Hanson's jailing.

Wilkie's book is even more disturbing, being filled with evidence at the way Bush, Blair and Howard launched war on Iraq against the advice and wishes of their intelligence experts and the UN Security Council.

Although the spooks did not 'perform flawlessly', they were 'not responsible for the Iraq fiasco'. This 'dubious honour' belongs to 'those who wanted the war and made the executive decision to wage it.'

Hence his decision to resign from ONA, write this book and plan to run for the Greens at the forthcoming election in Howard's own seat.

Along with fascinating, if sanitised, glimpses of the intelligence services, he suggests disturbingly that, 'Washington would seriously consider using nuclear weapons against any country... that tried to use WMD against it,' and is convinced that Canberra, and Alexander Downer personally, were pre-warned about terrorist threats to hotels and nightclubs in Bali.

Despite intensive efforts to discredit him, this prominent defector-to-the-truth has convincingly indicted the government's dishonest march to war and its defence of the disastrous results.

* Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.